“Flowering Garden in Spring” (1920, oil on canvas) by Henri Martin
“People from a planet without flowers would think we must be mad with joy the whole time to have such things about us.” ~ Iris Murdoch
The Bradford pears and Tulip trees are in full bloom, and I am reminded of the year I made mother’s day cards from photos I had taken of the trees in bloom—I was very pleased with how they had turned out, but my mother looked at hers and said, “What’s this?” Lex later told me that Mom had complained that I was too cheap to buy a card; Lex tried to explain to her that I had shot the photograph, worked with it on Photoshop, and had the print made. I had thought the gesture special. Oh well.
Anyway, I have to admit that when I was clearing out the thousands of cards in my mother’s drawers, I came across almost every card I had given her in the past decade and sometimes beyond, and the flimsy free homemade card I had made her was there.
Here. Have some flowers of spring:
“Flowers on a Chair” (1958, oil on canvas) by Adrian Ryan
“Marsh Marigolds” (1906) by Wladyslaw Slewinski
“Two Austrian Copper Roses III” (1957, oil on canvas laid down on board) by Georgia O’Keeffe
“Still Life with Pansies and Gladiolas” (nd, oil on canvas) by Arthur B. Carles
“Spring Breeze” (1946, oil on canvas) by Otto Torsten Andersson
“Glass with Wild Flowers” (1890, oil on canvas) by Vincent van Gogh
“Apple Tree Blooming” aka “The Eternal Spring” (1908) by Maurice Denis
“Paris Bouquet of Wild Flowers” (1923) by Pierre Bonnard
“Poppies and Grasses” (1914, oil on canvas) by Pierre Bonnard
“Les Roses” (1925-26, oil on canvas) by Claude Monet
“Meadow” (1913, oil on canvas) by Mikko Oinonen
“Black Will-o-the-Wisp” (date unknown, ink and wash) by Takato Yamamoto
“Flowers by the Sea” (1965, oil on composition board) by Fairfield Porter
“Poppy Field” by Michael Creese (nd)
“Bloomy Apple Garden” (1936) by Nikolay Bogdanov-Belsky
“Yellow Irises” (1901, oil on canvas) by Pablo Picasso
“Pink and Yellow Tree” (nd, oil on canvas) by Albert Henry Krehbiel
“Les Dahlias” (1921, oil on canvas) by Tsuguhara Foujita
“Sunflowers” (1958-59, oil on board) by Peter Coker
“Flower Garden, Pansies” (1908, oil on canvas) by Emil Nolde
“Magnolien” (1945, oil on canvas) by Cuno Amiet
“The Orchard” (nd, oil on canvas) by Robert William Vonnoh
“The Poppy FIelds” (c1963) by Anne Redpath
“Orchard with Blossoming Trees” (1888, oil on canvas) by Vincent van Gogh
“Poppies and Violet Asters” (nd, watercolor) by Emil Nolde
“Hyacinth” (1941, oil on board) by Chen Baoyi
“Petunias” (1925, oil on hardboard panel) by Georgia O’Keeffe
“Pink Roses” (1890, oil on canvas) by Vincent van Gogh
“Wannsee Garden” (1923, oil on canvas) by Max Liebermann
“L’amandier en fleurs” (1947) by Pierre Bonnard
Music by Mussorgsky, “Pictures at an Exhibition” (Promenade), performed by The Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra
